


Nature-Bound

by sugarspuncoeurls



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Female Character of Color, Fluff, Honeymoon, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 12:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5048965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarspuncoeurls/pseuds/sugarspuncoeurls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s a tour guide, a boy scout, a skinny-dipper, and a bear. </p>
<p>You think she would’ve learned all this before they got hitched.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nature-Bound

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Written for myself for my birthday. There's fluff. All the fluff. Seriously, it's a lot. Bring a toothbrush, and please enjoy.

“Can we leave yet?”

It’s the third time she’s asked. From her vantage, she can see and hear Kaidan sigh. “No, hear me out,” she continues. “We can go back home, take a shower, eat dinner, and spend the night watching one of your oldster movies, _or_ we can stay…here.” She wrinkles her nose and looks between her legs. The overalls covering her butt and the blanket cushioning it are the only barriers between her and the great outdoors. She doesn’t like that, hence her attempt to convince her companion to let them leave.

Contrary to her current mood, she’s enjoyed this past week spent God-knows-where on the Alenkos’ family land, as well as a space kid can while neck-deep in the wilderness making _up_ the Alenkos’ family land. It helps that all of it is so _new_ , the house and the homemade food and the heat of the sun on her face when she wakes up in the morning. And the husband, that’s new, too, but also a given. She’s not used to fresh breezes and green grass and real honest-to-god _wood_ under her feet; so, overwhelming as it sometimes is, she’s glad the Major’s taken it upon himself to be tour guide. With his careful planning, they’ve made the most of their free time together, spent their afternoons picnicking on the beach and their evenings camped under the same stars she’s so used to seeing outside the windows of a moving ship. His definition of romance, she’s starting to realize, a bit different from hers but very _him_ , sweet, simple, and surprisingly warm, since their only sources for heat have been a fire, a knit blanket, and each other’s bodies. It’s not the first choice she’d make for a honeymoon destination (not the second or third, either), but it’s had its perks.

Too bad this ain’t one of them.

“Kaidan?”

“I heard you.” She hears the amusement in his voice, accompanied by the gentle sluicing sounds of swimming as he lazily treads water down below. Compared to her, he looks happy as a…bug in a rug is what he said? She doesn’t like the analogy (fuck bugs, seriously), but he certainly looks content, chest-deep in his family’s lake. Looks good, too, all water-slicked and shining under the early evening sunlight threading through the tree canopy overhead. Makes her think she can maybe convince him to join heron the blanket, at least until he speaks again. “You don’t wanna come down for a swim first?” he asks. He glances up at her on the embankment, his mouth stretched in a convincing smile. She waves a hand.

“I’m fine up here.”

“Sure? Should be fun for someone who outran a reaper and climbed a brute like a jungle gym.”

She blinks. “A what?”

“A jungle gym,” he repeats. His smile goes wider, emphasizing the laugh lines around his mouth. “Something kids play on, with ladders and bars.”

“Oh.” Sounds fun; they should find one later, after they _leave_.

For a moment, they only look at each other. Then Kaidan chuckles. “You’re not coming in.”

She shakes her head and smirks. “No. Nice try, though.”

“You, too.” He lets out another sigh – she’s always liked that sound from him – nods to her. “Okay.”

She nods back. “Okay.” And just like that, he returns to treading water by his lonesome. She admits she wasn’t expecting him to give up so easily. Since they started this tour of the woods, she’s discovered two key things about Boy Scout Alenko: he likes the outdoors way too much, and he doesn’t like lip during his hikes, something she’s given in spades, however affectionately. Usually he has a nice comeback for her, a salty-sweet little retort that always makes her laugh and want to kiss him. It’s strange that he doesn’t give one now, and she pokes the aforementioned lip out in puzzlement and a small, creeping inkling of suspicion.

_What are you up to, Mr. Shepard-Alenko?_

(They should really come up with an abbreviation for their new combined name, by the way. It takes way too long to think and say.)

He doesn’t hear her thoughts like she half-expects him to. Grinning to herself, she settles on the small hill overlooking the lake, wraps her arms around her knees, and watches him dive under the water’s surface. No swim trunks; when they arrived, he merely stripped off his shirt and jumped in, much to her amusement. She hopes he’s not paying for it now; the day is getting darker, cooler, way different from the heat of this afternoon. It seems like kind of a copout, really, settling herself in Vancouver only to find out later that its summer was really only _Summer_ in name, at least by her standards. One week past the sunny, mid-August day of their wedding, and the weather already feels more fall-ish. Maybe it’s just her; she’s always preferred a bit more heat than the average person, and years spent living with the cool temps of ships never really changed that. There’s a reason she was most recognizable to the adoring public by the leather N7 jacket (a nightmare of gaudy neon, Miranda fondly called it) always thrown over her shoulders. She kind of misses it, especially with the new chill in the air, wonders if Kaidan would be willing to detour back to the house to pick it –

Something dark lands on the embankment near her feet, interrupting her thoughts with a heavy _thwump_. She blinks, her brow furrowing.

_The fu-_

Another, smaller dark something lands on top of the first.

_-ck?_

Slowly, she unfolds herself and crawls to the suspect pile. With cautious, curious fingers, she gropes along the top, and makes a face at the familiar feel of jean fabric and soft cotton. A second later, it clicks.

_No, he did **not**._

Of course he did. He knows the way she works by now.

Just to spite him, she almost doesn’t look, seriously considers planting her butt back into its cushion of leaf litter, rewrapping her arms around her knees, and bringing her gaze back to the setting sun. It’s pretty, right? All big and round and bright, and a whole lot more stimulating to look at than the Major’s uncovered –

_Damn it_. Two points for the Boy Scout; he knows how to play dirty.

He’s waiting for her when she looks to the water, his arms folded and resting on the bank’s edge and his face split in what she knows is his modest version of a shit-eating grin. She narrows her eyes and pretends she isn’t hyper-focused on the glistening of his shoulders or the horizon marking his top half from his still-submerged bottom. “If something bites you down there, I’mma laugh,” she says. “And then steal your clothes.” Kaidan laughs, his teeth bright against the gold-toned planes of his face.

“Still sure you don’t want to come in?”

She eyes the boundary line of the water again, then the small of pile of what are definitely his clothes at her feet. When she looks back at him, he’s still watching her, his eyebrows lightly raised, as if he knows where her thoughts are. She purses her lips. “Will you take me to a jungle gym tomorrow?”

He grins. “First thing after breakfast.”

Her lips purse harder, almost to a pout, before she lets out an overblown sigh and rises to her feet. “Fine.”

She can tell he’s trying to hide it, the little boyish glint that lights up his face every time he gets the chance to show her something new. She’s been seeing it a lot lately, that little sparkle, in his eyes and in his smile and in the wave of his arm as he leads the way down a tree-lined trail or sand-strewn pass. She likes to think she has a little something to do with it, that maybe her laugh or her lip or her being a _live_ gives those smile lines around his eyes and mouth a reason to appear a bit more often.

Or he’s just excited to see her naked. The feeling’s certainly mutual enough.

As she starts undressing, he lifts himself from the lake with a small heave and a splash. She pretends not to notice the bareness of his skin, at least until his hands go to her shoulders and start unclipping the fastenings of her overalls. She drops her own hands and lets him take over, the corners of her mouth curling. “Trying to butter me up?”

He chuckles. “A little.” He looks down at her as the second strap comes undone and flops down to her waist. “Is it working?”

“You’re on the right track to regaining my favor.”

“Good to know.” His smile turns sheepish. “I have been dragging you into a lot lately, huh?”

“Showing me your world,” she replies jokingly, her arms going up as he takes her midriff top and lifts it over her head with her bra.

“Some of it,” he admits, “mostly the places I loved as a kid.” He neatly folds her shirt and places it down on the ground next to them, giving her an appreciative shot of his leanly muscled side. When he rises, his hands return to lightly stroke the skin of her waist. She tilts her head, temporarily forgetting the great view to focus on his words.

“You came all the way out here when you were a kid?”

He shrugs. “Usually with Dad.” His smile turns a tad secretive. “Once or twice on my own.”

She snickers. “Looking for that final frontier, huh.”

“I knew it was out there somewhere. Just had to get the guts to find it.” He lifts his eyes to the orange-hued canopy. “Found this place instead. Always wanted to show it to you.”

“Mm.” She looks with him for a minute before lightly pushing his hands off her waist so she can return to the remainder of her clothing. With a small tug, her overalls fall down her legs to the ground, and she goes ahead and bends over to add the stretchy strings of her underwear to the bunch. When she comes back up, Kaidan’s watching her, curiosity mixed with that hint of humored affection he always seems to have. She plants her hands on her hips. “Better show me the rest of it, then,” she says. “Most of our time together’s been spent on my home front. I’m open to change.” With the lake water in her sights, she steps around him and gives a solid smack to his backside, gratified when the sound echoes just a tiny bit. Kaidan laughs, his hand finding hers as he follows.

“You’ve been wanting to do that for a while, haven’t you?”

“Since your pants hit the ground, Major.”

* * *

There’s dirt between her toes. Dirt, moss, and something weirdly slick and _def_ initely moving. She kinda wants to freak out about it, but Kaidan looks so doggone happy right now that she decides, just once, to keep the lip to herself.

He hasn’t let go since he first took her hand and guided them into the water. Kept his eyes on her, too, lips curved in such an encouraging little smile she had to laugh. “Guess I’m a toddler today,” she said. He tried not to grin too hard.

“Well, you’re short enough.”

True. Right now, they stand waist-deep, or at least, _her_ waist-deep. _He’s_ more like ass-deep, though he doesn’t seem to mind the extra nip. Too busy making sure she doesn’t slip on that slimy something still moving under her foot.

“Doing alright?” he asks. Fourth time, if she’s counting right.

“Fine.”

“Wanna go deeper?”

She thinks, then shakes her head. “Not yet. You can, though.”

“You sure?” He tilts his head; strands of wet hair curl and cling to his forehead. Cute. She nods.

“Go for it. I’m good.”

She digs her toes in as soon as he lets go, a solid-enough anchor against the small waves that hit when he swims out to the lake’s center. She skims the surface of the water with her palms, keeps half her attention on the ripples she makes and half on Kaidan, who’s made a note to not stray too far from her solitary figure. She smirks and slowly makes her way into deeper water, catching his eye when he notes her progress every few feet. “I _can_ swim, y’know,” she finally says. Wouldn’t be a good marine if she couldn’t, and damn sure wouldn’t’ve made it all the way to N7. She may not be H-2-O’s biggest fan, but she can deal with it when she has to.

“I know,” Kaidan answers.

“Why are you hovering, then?”

“According to my dad? Because I’m a mama bear.”

She pauses. “You’re not trying to say you’re secretly four-legged, are you?”

“Not quite.” With a twist and a kick, he makes his way close before changing direction, his movements languid. “It’s a title for someone who’s protective. And a bit coddling.”

“And overbearing.”

Another hint of sheepishness. “Yeah, maybe that, too.”

“So you’re a tour guide, a boy scout, a skinny dipper, and a bear.” She counts each one on her wet fingers, her lips pursed. “That’s a lot to learn after just one week, hubs.”

She feels him when he returns to her side; the same small waves that hit her when he left hit her again, like tiny tides rushing up against the dark shore of her belly. His hands find her thighs and travel up to her waist, and she stumbles with a laugh when he uses his hold on her to pull himself up to standing. Water splashes into her face with their movements, and when it calms, they’re pressed chest to chest, close enough for her to see the lines of crow’s feet around his eyes. He grins. “Regretting it yet?”

“Marrying you?” Strange, saying that aloud, even if they’re the only two within miles to hear it. ‘Husband’, too, will take some time to get used to, though maybe not as much as she originally thought. It fits him, better than ‘wife’ fits her, she’d bet, and really _does_ do a good job of summing up everything he’s ever been, friend and ally, protector and soft place.

And the way his smile widens at the word, the _reminder_ …she shrugs. “Not yet,” she says, right before she grabs his head and dunks it into the water.

As he splutters, she follows him under, her eyes adjusting to distorted yellow-gold before she’s greeted with a face full of bubbles from his laughter. She cups his cheeks in her hands and blows him her own, heedless of the air she’s losing. Her braids are thick black ribbons around their heads, creating streaks of shadow and sunset through the filtering light; he tangles his fingers into them and wraps his arm around her back, angles their heads close until their brows bump. _Rude_ , he mouths, and she replies with a shameless nod, her legs locking around him.

_Just how you like me_ , she thinks. This time, he gets the message _._

He tastes like the woods, she realizes, as she takes up the remaining space between them and seals their mouths together. Like water, too, obviously, but mostly like the woods, like those secret paths he’s taken her down, like his late-summer skinny-dipping and his funny Earth words and his desire to share it all with her.

Like good things, that’s what he tastes like. Like good things already here, and a hell of a lot of good things to come.

Nah, no regrets. Not yet.


End file.
